Well, we were initially thinking about doing a post on the evidence for and against Pokemon Black and White's being set in Shanghai or New York, but then Nintendo had to go and give a definitive answer and spoil the internet's fun by killing all the speculation. So instead, a random factoid!
There have been more than a few games in the past that have gotten cleaned up on their way to the US. And I don't mean "censored," though that often happens too- I mean refined. While the story and music to Dragon Warrior were the original game's, the graphics and interface were largely based on Dragon Quest II, and its revolutionary changes. Changes like "having different sprites for facing in different directions" and the related change of "not having to choose what direction you were friggin' talking to." Likewise, the unreleased version of the original Mother (AKA Earthbound Zero) had a number of changes and upgrades which were finally released back to Japan as part of the Mother 1 + 2 compilation for Game Boy Advance. Square makes a modest killing by releasing International Versions of the Final Fantasy series- usually with advances we didn't get in the US. (And it annoys me mindless that we didn't get the Zodiac Job System version of Final Fantasy XII, which is my favorite post 16-bit Final Fantasy.)
But more to the point: the same thing happened for Pokemon Red and Blue. While the Pokemon rosters and such were copied from the Japanese Pocket Monsters Red and Green, the game engine, with its changes to the sprites and Pokedex entries (and final dungeon layout) all hail from the Japanese version of Blue, the first of the now-traditional Third Version games. So while the English-speaking world often misses out on some cool stuff, the stuff we do get has the virtue of having been playtested and upgraded from the original Japanese versions.
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